


His Licentious Habits

by Arya_Greenleaf



Category: Bill & Ted (Movies), Haunted Summer (1988), The Lost Boys (Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Character, Blood, Crossover Pairings, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dracula Influence/References, Dubious Consent, F/M, Faked Suicide, Hypnotism, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Recreational Drug Use, Sexual Content, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Tags May Change, Vampire Hunters, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:41:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26886031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Greenleaf/pseuds/Arya_Greenleaf
Summary: In 1816, John Polidori enters into the service of Lord Byron. He's both physician & friend, indulging Byron in ways appropriate to his profession & notquite. Within three years he has publishedThe Vampyre; it becomes a plague more than triumph. Within the next, he is dead.Marko rises from the ashes of it, vital & thirsty in a way that he has never experienced. There is nothing left for him in the Queen's country or on the continent; but in the New World, in a new century, there's promise.On the cusp of the millennium Marko's grown tired. He's exhausted by years of thesame& life under Max's frivolous rule. The boys are distracted from the tedium by the Californian clime & Marko's restlessness finds relief in the appeal of awild stallion.~In the summer after their senior year, in the quiet after their excellent adventures, the Wyld Stallyns spend just a little longer trying to hold onto the freedom of being eighteen with very little expected of them. It all goes to hell whensomethingappears to be very wrong with Ted. The others must discover the source of the odd changes in him & reverse the course before it's too late.
Relationships: David/Marko (Lost Boys), Elizabeth & Joanna & Ted "Theodore" Logan & Bill S. Preston Esq., Elizabeth/Ted "Theodore" Logan, Joanna/Bill S. Preston Esq., Lord Byron/John Polidori, Marko/Paul (Lost Boys), Ted "Theodore" Logan & Bill S. Preston Esq., Ted "Theodore" Logan/Bill S. Preston Esq., Ted "Theodore" Logan/Marko (Lost Boys)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for tags in the end notes, may or may not be spoilers. Potentially triggering content is related to historical events that are altered for the plot of this story. Any changes or additions will be noted as necessary.
> 
> The original idea for this story was just a campy little BnT/TLB Dracula-esque mashup deal with Marko as the Count, Ted "Theodore" Logan as something between Lucy and Mina, and the rest of the Wyld Stallyns on the quest to save Ted from vampiric fate. Maybe 10k if I really felt motivated and Bill decided to be as theatric as he was when he thought Ted had been murdered by a medieval dickweed.
> 
> Then I watched "Haunted Summer" and this happened.
> 
> Don't watch the movie. It's terrible. Just watch AW's scenes. They're all posted somewhere or another and he's the only watchable part of the thing.
> 
> This turned out much more dark and dramatic when the idea shifted and the POV became "Marko Poli" (who is a vampire and not a water sport) instead of Bill. I hope you all still find it an enjoyable spooky season romp. 
> 
> It's still a WIP and will probably update slow-ish because my brain is mush and I've been staring at these first Polidori chapters for weeks.

John William Polidori was born 7th September in the year of Our Lord, 1795. He would come to find, however, that there was nothing godly about the time -- or the place -- or the people. Except, perhaps, Shelley’s brilliant wife. She was better than all of them by far, in intellect or spirit or in any measure that might be laid against her. Polidori wished sometimes that the story was about dearest Mary, and not the trials that the men around her put her and themselves through. Would that it had turned out so romantic, so nostalgic -- that summer just before Polidori turned twenty-one years -- but, for Polidori at the very least, it had been no more than the beginning of the end.

Or, rather, the beginning of more than a century of blood and regret.

In the early days of their companionship, George --  _ Lord Byron _ \-- was exceedingly generous. He had good reason to be so, Polidori thought. They traveled through the continent to familiar and unfamiliar locales. It was more than astute to maintain the favor of one that had been brought along as a private physician. More than  _ that _ one well known to be chronicling the journey -- and one that might find it in themself to make the going of it more diverting with the contents of their physician’s bag. As such, anything Polidori desired was his: smart clothes, good shoes, bundles of books, fine paper and pens, comfortable accommodations --

And sometimes, Byron himself.

As far as Polidori saw himself a learned  _ man _ , Byron was a greater one. Although hardly educated for his lack of interest and tendency toward…  _ frivolity _ \-- Byron’s eight elder years were a wealth of experience in the world and all of her varied inhabitants.

“ _ Poli _ ,” he’d purr. “Come to bed.”

Polidori knew what he wanted. It wasn’t  _ just _ Polidori but a little something extra. A surprise from the depths of his physician’s bag. Now, Byron stretches on the mattress, the curtains half fallen around him so that all Polidori can see is a slice of pale flank. He’d been in some pain, his leg inflamed after a day of ambulating over the rocky beachline around the estate that they had found rooms in. He wants to be indulged in all the ways that he hired Polidori to offer.

“ _ John _ ,” Byron snaps from behind the gossamer fabric.

“Yes, alright,” Polidori answers, annoyed. He picks up the shaker of writer’s dust and considers the goldish, flaky ammochrysus powder clinging to the spout. He could simply give Bryon something to ease him to sleep so that he might finish his writing for the evening in relative peace. A low, deep ache in his gut wraps its fingers around his spine when he glances at the freshly scribed page of his journal.

_ With his face enlivened by the activity, Lord Byron appeared as some youthful thing come down from Olympus to grace us -- the Lord of the Hunt rather than Rochdale. _

His face had been enlivened by the activity, certainly, because he was nearing fourteen stone and indulged more in Polidori’s graces than he did in anything else during their journey on the continent. Polidori liked him this way -- soft bodied with round, sunkissed cheeks.

“Polidori, if you do not come to bed this moment I will not have you at all.”

“ _ Yes _ .” 

He shakes the glittering drying agent over his pages and abandons any notion to wash the ink from the thick, calloused pad on his finger. The curtains thrown open, Byron watches him rise from the table and cross to where his bag is stashed. The opium won’t last much longer if Polidori isn’t more careful to ration it until their next stop -- but he does have morphine powder he’d hoped to reserve for dire circumstances.

Polidori supposes this might qualify as dire.

Byron is just a little ridiculous to behold, stark and nude save for his fine stockings. Polidori wonders, not for the first or last time, how many others had seen him this way. Tens? Hundreds? How many had seen him the way Polidori does -- when he’s sour and sore and lamenting the isolation of his position? Vulnerable.

“Open your mouth,” Polidori murmurs, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Propped up on an elbow, Byron parts his lips and glowers up at Polidori while he runs his fingertip beneath Byron’s lip. “That’s all you get.”

“What is it?”

“Something new. Made from opium -- you should be able to tolerate it.”

“Should?” Byron raises a brow and catches Polidori’s hand, his fingers stroking up beneath the hem of his sleeve.

“It’ll relax you. Make the pain go away. Help you sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep yet,” he says in a dark, demanding tone.

Polidori shakes his hand off and stands, slipping the suspenders from his shoulders and untucking his blouse. “I haven’t given you enough to knock you out, not to worry,  _ my Lord _ .” 

He takes his time undressing, making Byron wait. It’s one of the few genuine powers he has -- to make Byron  _ wait _ . It’s almost an afterthought when he swipes his finger through the residue that clings to the inside of the rim of the vial of morphine powder and shoves it up under his own lip.

Polidori watches Byron stroke himself and it’s almost absent minded, entirely casual in his vulgar display. Do his women like this? Polidori wonders, his menagerie or men? To witness this graceless exposure?

Naked, Polidori climbs onto the bed and on top of Byron, straddling a wide, pale thigh. Byron grits his teeth at the weight on his bad leg but doesn’t object -- doesn’t call attention to the weakness. Polidori leans down and wraps his lips around Byron’s half-hard cock and feels something like time beginning to slow as Morpheus begins to work his clever fingers into the lobe’s of Polidori’s brain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dubious Consent: There is always going to be dubcon where vampires are involved as far as I am concerned. No one is overtly forced to do anything but we all know a big trope is that they're very persuasive and/or hypnotic so you can never actually say for certain. There is no dubious (overtly/explicitly sexual) content involving Bill or Ted, mostly just vampire-related themes.
> 
> Suicidal Thoughts/Faked Suicide: IRL Polidori killed himself by taking cyanide. He was depressed and in serious debt. In this story he fakes the suicide to cover his vampirism and get away.
> 
> Drugs/Medical: Polidori was a doctor and was employed as such as Byron's companion. Opiates/opium were popular recreational drugs and Polidori most certainly had access to them and probably administered them for his pals as he is depicted doing in the various media related to the summer that the Romantics spent together. Morphine had very recently been derived from opium and they use it recreational purposes here. I do not claim to have proper knowledge of administration/effects/etc.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poli is not fond of Claire and is probably an unreliable narrator ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

_Fucking Claire Clairmont_.

It wasn’t even her goddamned _name_. Everything about the girl -- _Jane Vial_ \-- was a farce. She was nothing but an extended, hysterical piece of living theater and at eighteen she’d already been through several failed acts.

Now her latest script revision was in pursuit of Byron. Not, Polidori knew _quite well_ , because she had any interest in his mind or his companionship; but because Percy Shelley preferred her far less ridiculous sister and she was out to teach them some bizarre lesson.

Claire Clairmont. More like _Fabulist Fabricator_.

Polidori knew her very well, he’d done plenty of searching and discovered all of her terrible secrets. How she was illegitimate -- the paternal name on her papers entirely invented and the name _Clairmont_ a farce concocted by her mother to hide it all and give dame and daughter a more respectable calling card. How she’d had at least two other aliases before eighteen, trying to sound a proper, well-bred lady. How she’s been trying to become a singer of notoriety and failing. How she’d gone after Shelley. How she carries on with him even though rebuff after rebuff _after rebuff_.

How she talked about her brilliant step-sister behind her back, at plays and soirees, chatting all around London and Calais how Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was living in sin with a married man -- fallen into depraved adultery -- but not _Claire_ , no, never Claire. She never fell into bed with the two of them after all that talking, either. Never drew her clever, learn’d step-sister into a plurality she wasn’t strong enough in will to properly reject under the shadow of the romantic revolution.

Claire only wrote letter after letter _after goddamned forsaken letter_.

And then she’d tumbled right into bed with Byron. Lord Rochdale, who could give her everything she wanted if he’d just leave his lovely, mathematical wife.

Polidori just hoped the sow wasn’t up the spout.

She pursues them across the continent, chasing them into Switzerland and catching them at the hotel they stop in before quitting France entirely. Polidori would hear from the staff later, while settling in and after a handsome tip, that Clairmont and the others were heard openly discussing Byron upon his arrival. Not in the way typical of the masses enthralled by George’s wealth and status and personal appeal but rather in the manner of a hunter discussing the best location to lay a pile of apples and set their blind.

It’s all getting much too out of hand, this obsession. Polidori has to trust that Byron will put the silly girl in her place, just like all the rest.

“Please have a hot bath prepared for his lordship,” Polidori instructs the staff upon their arrival. “And bring two bottles of champagne, as soon as possible?” It’s an afterthought, but sometimes the best medicine after so long on the road is simply to relax and indulge. Byron’s leg isn’t too troublesome today, it seems. A bit of pampering should do just the trick.

As he is giving his instructions, there is the curious sound of slippers on marble moving very quickly. Polidori knows without looking who it is. He thinks perhaps he can get Byron up the stairs and into their lodgings before Clairmont descends upon them in earnest in all her flippant, pouting glory. Alas, he’s unsuccessful.

Bryon _told her_ where they would be. Polidori can only be outraged for a moment. He knows his companion and patron well. He knows that he lives for the chase and the flattery. Bryon is like a hothouse flower. Without careful cultivation he withers.

George introduces Polidori and for a moment, he thinks that this is it: Clairmont will see that she’s unwanted. “My Lord’s _companion_ and physician,” Polidori adds. He can see the minute shifting of her expression, realization dawning on her for just a fraction of fraction of a second before she dives back into the dark waters of denial and vanity. 

Bryon is irritated with her. _Are you ill?_ The absolutely childish way that she wavers and warbles is sickening to witness.

It’s not then that Byron treats Polidori like a servant -- _go and make sure the dog is fed, Poli_ \-- that offends him. It’s that he’s brushed off like a servant in favor of this _stupid girl_. It’s the way that she looks back at him while she climbs the stairs on Byron’s arm. It’s the way that they proceed to spend the afternoon playing games in the garden and then fucking on any surface that stays still long enough. Polidori can hear them, locked in his room as he is in the generous apartment that Byron has taken up, singing lewd songs and spanking each other. They’re intoxicated, Polidori is sure of it -- just not sure on what.

What has this conniving pretender brought with her?

Polidori is Byron’s companion and _physician_ , after all. He should be properly informed.

It’s a relief when she departs with the dawn. No doubt to scurry back to Shelley’s bed and upset that applecart just a little bit more. Perhaps, Polidori thinks, with Claire Clairmont out of his system at long last George will be a more amiable travel companion.


	3. Chapter 3

“My whole being shakes with a hatred so strong it seems to smother my very life!” Shelley throws his napkin down orates on the evils of power before he throws himself to his feet and calls for an anarchist revolution. Mary is visibly embarrassed by his display, and dare Polidori think it, maybe a little bit repulsed. “ _Excuse me_ ,” he says, fixing his blouse. “These are topics that lie close on my soul.”

What Shelley fails to realize, or perhaps precisely why they _lie close on his soul_ , is that he would not _be_ Percy Shelley without the very systems of power that he is railing against. In fact, that none of the people at their intimate table could possibly be the the very position they are in now -- seated at a meal they did not prepare served by men who they will promptly forget in a hotel on the continent that has never seen a guest worth less than several hundred, if not a few thousand, pounds a year.

What an absolute dolt, Polidori thinks. He is a handsome dolt, though, and he writes pretty words. He can see the vague shape of why Mary has fallen in with him.

And why Claire was so determined to have him before she set her resolutions on securing Lord Rochdale’s favor.

George humors Shelley for a moment, musing that England herself washes out the spirit of revolution in her people. It’s not entirely untrue, Polidori supposes, but he keeps his opinions to himself. He’s no wish to be drawn into a political row before he’s hardly had a bite. It would put him off his meal entirely, to argue with someone who seems to think only of the romance of revolution and not the impact or the working of the thing -- a soft man who’s not worked a day in his soft life beyond the strokes of pen on paper.

_Oh, Geordie,_ Polidori thinks. _Do not let us get tangled up with these hopeless poets. They’re in want of lodgings, not learning._

“Laudanum! I’m never without it.” Shelley brandishes a brown flask and makes to hand it across the table. Polidori has a mind to knock it out of his hand rather than allow Byron to intercept it. A poet _and_ an addict it is, then. He can’t be bothered to prepare the poppy properly, simply must have it available to drink from the bottle like a fussy babe. It’s very working-class of him. Very _revolutionary_. To choose such a cheaply purchased vice, that is.

When Byron suggests that he prefers smoking, Shelley’s eyes light up with opportunity. Polidori doesn’t need to listen to what Byron says next to know what’s coming.

“Perhaps we shall have to ask the good doctor here to rectify that lamentable omission.” Byron sits up and edges closer, his hand falling close to Polidori’s on the table. The sly set to his features tells Polidori to play along and he’s more than happy to. “It’s what he does best! Potions and pleasures from Poli -- sometimes considerable pleasure.”

Byron pats Polidori’s knuckles affectionately and Shelley’s eyes shine with understanding. Well then, Polidori thinks, perhaps he’ll reign in his detestable sister-not-in-law. The sisters themselves exchange a look. The displeasure on Clairmont’s face is _delicious_ but not as much as the weight and warmth of Byron’s hand. She is even more displeased when Polidori makes light of Byron’s tenacious appetite for chambermaids.

“Lies!” Byron laughs. “I’ve not had a whore in… six months.”

_Lies_ , Polidori thinks. _You had one last night._

He tells them that he confines himself to strict adultery and really, is that not what they all are? All five of them, breaking their fast. Byron is still legally married to Anabella and with a darling child not even yet a year old -- taking up Polidori’s companionship and lending himself to Clairmont. Shelley’s carrying on with Godwin’s daughters _both_ while his own Harriet falls into melancholy under the weight of the debts and children he’d left her beneath. If Polidori’s information was right, Shelley’d already got Mary with child, too, though it had ended rather in tragedy.

Polidori can’t quite find as much fault in the ladies at the other end of the table as in Byron and Shelley. Once they’d started down the path they’d been led, where else really had they to go? Mary, at least, does seem genuinely fond of the _dear_ lamb with the liquid praise in his pocket.

Polidori is distracted, his mind wandering to his journals -- the private and the one to be published. He will certainly record his own thoughts on this affair, of which there are plenty, but he’s not sure whether to include Shelley and Godwin and Clairmont in the official chronicle. Would it only serve to diminish Lord Byron’s personal nobility? This crass association?

Distantly, he’s aware of someone belching out loud. George’s manners have never been well brought and he turns into a bit of a rube when he’s faced with things he prefers not to discuss. Polidori wishes he’d been paying closer attention. Shelley has just proven himself _so insufferable._

Bryon gets out of his seat, rambling about dieting, and approaches Mary. It’s classically Byron in the manner of it. He demands something in a way that makes the thing sound entirely innocuous even if it is quite the opposite. Mary’s made it clear she wants no part in his games -- _Oh!_ How Polidori wishes he’d been paying attention! But Byron is already on his knees beside her, shoving her hand into his blouse. He turns to Claire, who needs no additional prodding to participate in the vulgar display, and holds both hands close against himself to trap them there.

“Shelley, I begin to understand you,” Byron purrs. That’s it, Polidori supposes. All is lost.

The notion is well confirmed when Clairmont informs the table that Byron has offered their little adulterous crush the cottage at the villa that is their final destination for the season. George hadn’t mentioned the proposal to Polidori at all and the lack of personal and professional courtesy is stinging. Is he expected to play companion and physician to them all? Is he expected to dole out his potions and pleasures at Lord Rochdale’s whim?

They accept, of course, with very little prodding and toast to friendship in a way that poisons the word. Polidori clinks his glass as expected of him, but he does not drink the wine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The coming chapters will be influenced by the 2017 _Mary Shelley_ with Elle Fanning as _Haunted Summer_ doesn't really give us much material actually about the "haunted summer."


End file.
